Washington DC (UBE) & Virginia Bar Exam Tutoring & Self-Study

Category: Bar Exam

  • Final thoughts on self-study materials for the DC Bar and MBE/MEE/MPT

    Now that the Feb 2009 bar is behind us, I wanted to discuss the materials I used… I must be honest, 90-95% of my study was on the MBE. I put in less than 1 week of study on the MEE subjects (much less than 40 hours), and about 20 hours of study for the MPT. So the other 300-400 hours I spent studying were MBE focused… I did this because the MBE is 50% of the exam, and the MBE subjects are usually 2-3 of the 6 essay questions on the MEE. The MPT does not require more than 20-40 hours of study, so I decided to roll the dice and focus heavily on the MBE subjects and MBE test-taking strategies and tactics. I feel that the gamble paid off well, as I was quite comfortable with the MBE material, MBE essay topics on the MEE, and the 3 MEE questions that I did have that were non-MBE subjects, I felt that I did about the same as everyone else I talked to after the exam… So I don’t think I would have gained much by having spent more time studying on the MEE subjects, but I definitely think I would have done worse on the MBE had I studied less for it…

    Anyway, on to my ratings of the materials:

    Here is my analysis of all the materials on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the highest)
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  • February 2009 Bar Exam is Finished

    Well, it’s over… The MBE was harder than expected… Morning section was particularly brutal, I saw a lot of dejected faces at the end of the morning session… There were some VERY tricky questions, one of them was such a fine line that I found myself asking myself “What point does such a fine line question serve other than a ritual-style hazing of bar examinees?”

    I must say, the questions on the actual MBE were not very similar to any practice questions, not even the released ones… Maybe a small minority were similar, say, 15-20%, but the rest were pretty different, many topics that I had never seen and many others where the question required a deeper mastery of the material than I had…

    Anyway, I hope everyone did well, I will do a post in a few days discussing all the various materials I used and how useful I found them for the actual exam, as well as which study strategies worked best for me…

  • Unpredictable MEE in DC

    Wow, DC totally screwed people over today by giving MEE topics that are non consistent with what they have given in the past, and leaving out topics that have been consistently testing for years… I guess they want to make their ultra-low pass rate even lower… My heart goes out to all the poor folks I saw today retaking the exam… Seriously, it was a sad sight, people looked so dejected and defeated both before and especially after the exam, I felt bad for them… Lots of older folks too :(

    MPTs were as expected though, so hopefully that helped everyone out! Good luck on the MBE tomorrow, knock it out…

  • Last weekend before the bar, MPT/MEE push…

    Well, the time has come… Just a few days till the DC Bar Exam and I am definitely underprepared for the MEE section… I feel good about the MPTs though, having done 3 previous MPTs this week, I will do 1 more tomorrow but I’ve been doing very well on them so far… My hand gets tired after all the writing, and I wish there was more than 1.5 hours per question, but c’est la vie…

    I’ve been reading plenty of previous MEE questions from about 2003/2004 to the present… I am woefully unprepared for the MEE-only subjects, but strong (as should be expected) on the MBE subjects… I plan to focus heavily on Trusts, Wills, Family Law, and Corporations this weekend by reading the BAR/BRI Conviser outlines for those 4 subjects, as well as the outlines in the Rigos/Emanuel MEE book… I plan to finish my day on Sunday doing all 9 actual MEE questions from February 2008…

    Oh, and I will be reading Strategies and Tactics and doing a handful of PMBR MBE questions each night from now until the bar… I have not yet decided how I will be spending my Monday/Monday night, but I think I’ll be doing about a 50/50 split on MBE/MEE stuff… Tuesday night will obviously be 100% MBE study…

    Believe it or not, I’m actually looking forward to the bar exam, as I am curious what the current, actual MBE questions look like… The MEE/MPT I don’t really care about, but the MBE fascinates me and I can’t wait to see what fine-line questions they have prepared…

    BTW, I took the newly posted MBE-OPE-1/2 exams from the NCBE and the questions are reflective of the NEW style of MBE questions, so I would highly recommend to anyone to pay the $52 and buy both exams and do the questions to familiarize yourself with the new style… I love the new simplified style of questions, they are much easier to read, more straightforward, and really hone in on knowledge of the law, instead of multiple-choice “tricks”…

  • Just over 1 week till the bar…

    Well, with just over 1 week till the bar, I thought I’d post a few updates:

    1) I received my admission ticket to the exam on Wednesday. It was mailed out Tuesday and arrived the next day via first class mail. Very straightforward, MPT/MEE the first day, MBE the 2nd day, no surprises…

    2) I took about 2 weeks off studying as I had tons of work/travel to do, so I haven’t done much in the way of MEE/MPT studying… I read the barbri conviser outlines for the MEE subjects, and skimmed the Rigos/Emanuel MPT book, but that’s about it… I went back and did the 200 question PMBR practice test and did very well on it, with a passing raw score, which was my goal… So I’m feeling pretty good about the MBE, but I really want to score as many points there as possible to make up for bad MEE performance, so I’m going to continue to focus my efforts all the way through the exam on the MBE…

    3) So, the plan is to do the feb and july 2008 MPTs and MEEs, and that’s about it for those 2 exams… I am hoping the trends for the usual subjects and rotations of subjects continues on the MEEs, but either way, with the addition of the MBE subjects on the MEE, I feel much more comfortable focusing on the MBE… As Feinberg says, “If after 4 years of undergrad, and 3 years of law school, you still haven’t figured out how to bs your way through a bluebook during an essay exam, then you don’t deserve to be a lawyer!” :-)

  • One 200-Q practice exam each weekend from now till the bar exam

    Finished up the 200 question practice MBE in the Strategies and Tactics book this weekend, then went over all the answers. I thought it was very helpful… So much so in fact, that I’ve decided to do a 200Q practice exam every weekend from now till the bar (That’s 4 more practice exams)… I may not be able to get one in next weekend due to work travel, but that shouldn’t be a problem since I only have two more practice exams that I am aware of. (The barbri simulated MBE and the PMBR one)… So maybe I’ll end up spending those other 2 weekends doing MPT’s and MEE’s…

    I’ve decided to focus more on the MPT than the MEE, simply because the MEE will most likely be 2-3 MBE subjects, so that leaves roughly 12%-16% of the entire bar exam on the MEE subjects, so the MPT being 25% should warrant roughly twice the study time… I am not going to give it twice the study time, but I will probably give it 50% more study time than the MEE subjects… And of course, I am going to focus my MEE subject study on the more probable topics to be tested…

  • 1 month till the bar…

    Exactly 1 calendar month until the bar exam… I am going to begin MEE/MPT studying Monday… Up to this point, I’ve been 100% focused on MBE subjects… I have finished all the practice questions in Strategies and Tactics… That’s 354 questions, which I completed in an average time of 1.5 minutes per question (fastest questions were Torts and Evidence which I finished in about 1.2 and 1.3 minutes per question, respectively… Slowest was Con Law, which I finished in 1.8 minutes per question) so time doesn’t appear to be too big of an issue at this point…

    This weekend, I am doing the 200-question practice MBE in Strategies and Tactics, as I plan to do a 3 hour timed session this morning of the AM portion of the exam (100 questions) and then go over the answers this afternoon, then do the same tomorrow with the PM portion… I hope to score, at a bare minimum, a 130 raw, with my target being a 150 raw score… This will be the first time I have done mixed-subject MBE questions…

  • Received confirmation from DC Bar Committee on Admissions

    I received a letter in the mail this weekend from the DC Court of Appeals Committee on Admissions. Basically, it was confirmation that my application was accepted for processing and they expect to mail my admission ticket and further details on Tuesday February 10, 2009. It also gave the testing location and time of the bar exam.

    I’m glad I got something in the mail… It was nice to get a confirmation and details on when the admission ticket would be sent… Although they like to cut it close by sending out the ticket 2 weeks before the bar exam…

  • Just under 7 weeks till the bar

    I believe this is when most of the bar review courses start, with 7 weeks till the bar… I have done approx 300 PMBR Red Book questions across the 6 MBE subjects, as well as reviewed flash cards and Strategies and Tactics when I can… I’ve also been continuing to listen to the PMBR CDs when I am in my car… I must admit, I slowed down over the holidays, and after the new year, but I am ready to kick things off for the “final” 7 weeks till the bar… Unfortunately, my full-time job is becoming more demanding as time goes on and February will be a very busy month (go figure)…

    Anyway, my immediate goal is to complete all of the practice questions in the Strategies and Tactics book. There are 354 questions total across all 6 MBE subjects, and all are released NCBE questions from previous bar exams… To date, I’ve only done PMBR sample questions so I’m curious to see the difference in the style/difficulty of the questions… Once I’m done, I plan to do the NCBE Annotated Preview 2006… My goal is to finish all 354 questions by next Friday, Jan 16th. I think that is possible, even though I am traveling on business 2 days next week…

    I’ve been continuing to make notecards, but I don’t have the time to review them as much as I’d like to… Con Law and Contracts are killing me… By FAR my worst two subjects… Property and Evidence are my best so far… I know this is somewhat backwards, so I’m hoping that Con Law “comes to me” at some point before the bar, because right now it’s brutal…

  • Exactly 2 months till the bar & Interesting Comment

    I don’t have too much to write about, other than I am doing 25-30 practice questions every day, reviewing my Strategies and Tactics book daily, as well as making and reviewing notecards daily too… My main focus is on property and evidence, big time… I feel pretty good, so not much too report… If I can keep up 25-30 questions per day, I will have done about 2000 practice questions come bar exam time… For each question, regardless if I got it right or wrong, I review the full answer to the question and make a note card if I don’t fully understand the answer…

    Anyway, I received an interesting comment today (It’s a comment on the first post of this blog from an anonymous poster) which is published and I already responded to it but I wanted to make it a post as well, since most people probably don’t subscribe to the comments…

    Here’s the comment from the anonymous poster:
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